[Edit: Actually we traced our problem to an overzealous spam filter, which probably thought that some comments looked too much like the work of a certain D**** M****. We're retraining it as fast as we can, but in the meantime, please do enjoy the thread.]

without a guiding Entity whose Self-awareness equates to the coherence of self-perceptual spacetime, a self-perceptual universe could not coherently self-configure. Holopantheism is the logical, metatheological umbrella beneath which the great religions of mankind are unknowingly situated.

God is indeed real, for a coherent entity identified with a self-perceptual universe is self-perceptual in nature, and this endows it with various levels of self-awareness and sentience, or constructive, creative intelligence.

Not to interrupt, but, without looking at the source you're copy/pasting from, please explain what is meant by describing the universe as "self-perceptual." Are you arguing the universe is itself sentient?

Wish I could stay for this, but I have to go pick up my son. Martin, keep an eye on the spam filter and make sure it doesn't misbehave again, k? Mike, I look forward to seeing how I have become another notch in your belt when I return this evening, k? ;)

I have very expensive guitars, 12 of them, some I have had my entire life and one guitar was given to me at birth by my grandfather...therefore obviously I am a great guitarist and entertainer. BzzzzzT Does not work does it!?

the universe, like the set of all sets, distributively embodies the logical syntax of its own descriptive mathematical language. It is thus not only self-descriptive in nature; where logic denotes the rules of cognition (reasoning, inference), it is self-cognitive as well.

it topologically includes itself in the act of descriptively including itself in the act of topologically including itself..., and so on, in the course of which it obviously becomes more than just a set.

the CTMU shows that reality possesses a complex property akin to self-awareness. That is, just as the mind is real, reality is in some respects like a mind. But when we attempt to answer the obvious question "whose mind?", the answer turns out to be a mathematical and scientific definition of God.

So far Mike has demonstrated that he can't prove that either the kalaam cosmological or first cause arguments are valid/plausible. Now he is spitting out nonsensical garbage arguments that have no inherent meaning, and resorts to special pleading and circular arguments....Yeah nothing new here.

Wow. I can't believe I actually punished my brain by reading the CMTU stuff. Mike, you could have saved us all a lot of time by simply saying that you believe as Sungyak does in that you disagree with materialistic naturalism.

"without a guiding Entity whose Self-awareness equates to the coherence of self-perceptual spacetime, a self-perceptual universe could not coherently self-configure"

This is an assertion. A needlessly obfuscated one at that. You are just asserting that "the universe cannot 'just exist' therefore some intelligence must be involved" except in a gibberishly, desperate to sound deep and meaningful sort of way.

"That is, just as the mind is real, reality is in some respects like a mind."

Being in some respects like a mind does not imply intelligence or consciousness. My computer is "in some respects like a mind" but it has never told me that it loves me. :(

in my first post on this thread, i gave you a link to the paper.so it saddens me that i have to spoonfeed you it:In short, the set-theoretic and cosmological embodiments of the self-inclusion paradox are resolved by properly relating the self-inclusive object to the descriptive syntax in terms of which it is necessarily expressed, thus effecting true self-containment: "the universe (set of all sets) is that which topologically contains that which descriptively contains the universe (set of all sets)."

type in chris langan on youtube, and you will get for the first hit a 3-part interview in which he explains his theory.remember, he is probably in terms of raw brainpower the smartest guy on earth. so maybe he sucks at explaining things clearly to normal people, but so do many geniuses.

I smell an argument from authority. Please tell us what *you* think. I'm not watching some youtube video. Please give us the main points from that video. While you're at it, please respond to any of our questions/remarks.

As Mamba24 points out, Mike has been plagiarizing his argument from Christopher Langan's Wikipedia page. I wouldn't expect any clarification -- since the obfuscatory language isn't even his, he probably doesn't understand the claims he's making any better than we do.

remember, he is probably in terms of raw brainpower the smartest guy on earth.

so maybe he sucks at explaining things clearly to normal people, but so do many geniuses.

No, true geniuses are the ones who can distill their thoughts in such a way that their utility is clear to just about anyone. Someone who can't explain their thoughts coherently could as easily be insane as a genius.

What does this say about God? First, if God is real, then God inheres in the comprehensive reality syntax, and this syntax inheres in matter. Ergo, God inheres in matter, and indeed in its spacetime substrate as defined on material and supramaterial levels. This amounts to pantheism, the thesis that God is omnipresent with respect to the material universe. Now, if the universe were pluralistic or reducible to its parts, this would make God, Who coincides with the universe itself, a pluralistic entity with no internal cohesion. But because the mutual syntactic consistency of parts is enforced by a unitary holistic manifold with logical ascendancy over the parts themselves - because the universe is a dual-aspected monic entity consisting of essentially homogeneous, self-consistent infocognition - God retains monotheistic unity despite being distributed over reality at large.

Thus, we have a new kind of theology that might be called monopantheism, or even more descriptively, holopantheism. Second, God is indeed real, for a coherent entity identified with a self-perceptual universe is self-perceptual in nature, and this endows it with various levels of self-awareness and sentience, or constructive, creative intelligence.

Simply resorting to an argument from authority doesn't make your argument any more plausible, when we speak of scientific evidence, we are talking about a universally accepted peer-reviewed scientific theory...in which Chris Langan's theory doesn't fit...If his theory was correct then all scientists from around the world would be all over it. But this just isn't the case. It doesn't matter what the man's IQ is, it won't be an accepted theory unless there is evidence to support it...which there isn't.

Why, if there exists a spiritual metalanguage in which to establish the brotherhood of man through the unity of sentience, are men perpetually at each others' throats? Unfortunately, most human brains, which comprise a particular highly-evolved subset of the set of all reality-subsystems, do not fire in strict S-isomorphism much above the object level. Where we define one aspect of "intelligence" as the amount of global structure functionally represented by a given sÎS, brains of low intelligence are generally out of accord with the global syntax D(S). This limits their capacity to form true representations of S (global reality) by syntactic autology [d(S) Éd d(S)] and make rational ethical calculations. In this sense, the vast majority of men are not well-enough equipped, conceptually speaking, to form perfectly rational worldviews and societies; they are deficient in education and intellect, albeit remediably so in most cases. This is why force has ruled in the world of man…why might has always made right, despite its marked tendency to violate the optimization of global utility derived by summing over the sentient agents of S with respect to space and time.

But although religion has often been employed for evil by cynics appreciative of its power, several things bear notice. (1) The abuse of religion, and the God concept, has always been driven by human politics, and no one is justified in blaming the God concept, whether or not they hold it to be real, for the abuses committed by evil men in its name. Abusus non tollit usum. (2) A religion must provide at least emotional utility for its believers, and any religion that stands the test of time has obviously been doing so. (3) A credible religion must contain elements of truth and undecidability, but no elements that are verifiably false (for that could be used to overthrow the religion and its sponsors). So by design, religious beliefs generally cannot be refuted by rational or empirical means.

Does the reverse apply? Can a denial of God be refuted by rational or empirical means? The short answer is yes; the refutation follows the reasoning outlined above. That is, the above reasoning constitutes not just a logical framework for reality theory, but the outline of a logical proof of God's existence and the basis of a "logical theology".

Mike - I think your argument ignores the photothetically omnirelevance of ectoplasmic endocrinions doesn't it? Have you considered that if you subdivide the neural brain and coagulate it with raw chicken eggs, it renders your entire hypothesis unfallitible? Well, have you?

Big words does not an intelligent sentence make. Stop telling us what Langan thinks and why, he's very unimpressive to me. Tell us what you think and why.

Also, I would like to point out that being intelligent is not the same as being right. Isaac Newton was a brilliant man, he also advocated a number of batshit crazy ideas too. Don't tell us, boy that Chris Langan guy is smart. Tell us why we should believe any of this CTMU stuff.

go to 1:05 of this vid.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyd6om8IC4M&feature=relmfuthunderfoot never explains whats wrong with this ARGUMENT. he just ATTACKS the preacher because of the mix up of the name of the university. who CARES if it was Harvard or Nottingham. that doesnt mean the ARGUMENT is bad.that is the ad hominem fallacy.served.

If you can't even understand the argument yourself Mike then you shouldn't be using it to try and validate your claims.

"Moving on, without religion life is meaningless because the heat death of the universe will end us."

LOL wow now you are just abandoning your last argument and pulling the "life is meaningless without religion card". Firstly, whether or not life is meaningful is up to the individual mind, not an external set of beliefs that a population may hold. The fact that we are born into this world, live for a short amount of time, then die...makes life more meaningful and valuable. If an afterlife existed then that would make this life less meaningful(IMHO)...So yes Mike, some day far far far far in the future our sun will die after going through all the phases of death(Red Giants, etc...), Life will no longer be able to exist...Sorry if that hurts your feelings, but resorting to arguments from Emotion doesn't make your beliefs anymore rational or justied. Try again buddy.

Mike, we wanted your arguments. We didn't simply want you to engage in a copy-paste orgy of pure metaphysical gibberish you cribbed from some fringe website whose pantheistic arguments I'm quite sure even your hero William Lane Craig would have no truck with. So again, why do YOU believe in God, and what evidence can YOU present us of his existence? Don't even pretend you know what this site you're pasting from is talking about. If we asked you this question on the street, you wouldn't have that at your disposal.

Yeah I'm thinking this kid might not be for real either after the "Morals come from god statement"....Gee Mikey we neva heard dat one beeforah!!....Actually Mike you need to offer evidence for this assertion to be deemed justified. But we know you ain't going to do it.

Mike, as you see, it is not a "rigged game." That is how theists play, not us. As you can clearly see, every comment of yours that gets hit by the spam filter is quickly rescued by us. So the whining isn't serving you well here.

go to 1:05 of this vid.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyd6om8IC4M&feature=relmfuthunderfoot never explains whats wrong with this ARGUMENT. he just ATTACKS the preacher because of the mix up of the name of the university. who CARES if it was Harvard or Nottingham. that doesnt mean the ARGUMENT is bad.

If you keep watching the rest of the video, he explains why the argument is bad.

But this is a non-sequitur. As JT asked: How exactly does the universe have a mind, and is self aware(like). What evidence do you have that demonstrates this?

I have no idea what's causing Blogger to keep filtering Mike. May have something to do with his IP. In any event, how FRUSTRATED would you be if a guy came along all cocky and aggressive, then failed to offer an original argument or even a cogent defense of what he was simply pasting from some website? I'd say very.

Pretty sure Mike is just a kid who doesn't really know what's going on here.

His claim that this quack preacher is so smart that he's hard to understand combined with his copy-paste nonsense replies leads me to suspect he himself doesn't understand the quackery but is trying to use it anyway...

although religion has often been employed for evil by cynics appreciative of its power, several things bear notice. (1) The abuse of religion, and the God concept, has always been driven by human politics, and no one is justified in blaming the God concept, whether or not they hold it to be real, for the abuses committed by evil men in its name. Abusus non tollit usum. (2) A religion must provide at least emotional utility for its believers, and any religion that stands the test of time has obviously been doing so. (3) A credible religion must contain elements of truth and undecidability, but no elements that are verifiably false (for that could be used to overthrow the religion and its sponsors). So by design, religious beliefs generally cannot be refuted by rational or empirical means.

Does the reverse apply? Can a denial of God be refuted by rational or empirical means? The short answer is yes; the refutation follows the reasoning outlined above. That is, the above reasoning constitutes not just a logical framework for reality theory, but the outline of a logical proof of God's existence and the basis of a "logical theology".

We are not censoring you. Blogger is feeding you into the spam filter, and I am removing your comments from spam. You know this. So to keep claiming otherwise and whining about North Korea (like that little bitch Andrew whined about "1984" — seriously, if you losers didn't have persecution complexes, you'd have nothing at all) makes you nothing but a liar.

why do you think people blow themselves up if god isnt real?you think they are just insane?like, o i will just blow up dynamite wrapped around my waist or i will fly a plane into a skyscraperif there WAS no heaven?

(1) The abuse of religion, and the God concept, has always been driven by human politics, and no one is justified in blaming the God concept, whether or not they hold it to be real, for the abuses committed by evil men in its name. Abusus non tollit usum.

Translation: just because people have done bad things in the name of religion doesn't make religion bad.

My response: Sure. but as religion likes to claim to be a source of morality and decency, AND to be commanded from on high, we would expect fewer incidences of bad behavior from the religious, whereas if anything studies tend to show the opposite.

(2) A religion must provide at least emotional utility for its believers, and any religion that stands the test of time has obviously been doing so.

Translation: Religion makes people feel good.

My response: That doesn't mean that they're true. Any number of lies can make people feel good.

(3) A credible religion must contain elements of truth and undecidability, but no elements that are verifiably false (for that could be used to overthrow the religion and its sponsors). So by design, religious beliefs generally cannot be refuted by rational or empirical means.

Translation: Religion intentionally obfuscates its claims and tries to avoid making concrete claims at all in an attempt to defy skeptical inquiry.

My response: Skeptical inquiry responds to any claim with "prove it." A claim intentionally designed so that it cannot be demonstrated doesn't get very far. The response is not to believe an unsubstantiated claim, not to decide that it's so ephemeral we might as well believe it as not.

Also, most religions DO make quite concrete claims that are readily studied and almost always false.

Can a denial of God be refuted by rational or empirical means? The short answer is yes; the refutation follows the reasoning outlined above

There was no reasoning above, but yes, a denial of god can be refuted by rational or empirical means. Feel free to present some of that any old time now.

That is, the above reasoning constitutes not just a logical framework for reality theory, but the outline of a logical proof of God's existence and the basis of a "logical theology".

You have at no point demonstrated the existence of god. To recap, you've argued:

Mike said.."why do you think people blow themselves up if god isnt real?you think they are just insane?like, o i will just blow up dynamite wrapped around my waistor i will fly a plane into a skyscraperif there WAS no heaven?"

Your correct Mike, it's called being delusional. People convince themselves that heaven exists...so that they feel obligated to carry through blowing themselves up...It's a crazy world we live in Mike, with crazy people who have crazy deluded thoughts...Now you are resorting to arguments from ignorance..."Gee I can't think of any reason why people would blow themselves up unless god is real!"....Yeah we know you can't think Mike, that's why you fail at presenting any meaningful/rational/evidence supported argument and why we find you incredibly interesting. So what's next? lol

reality itself should be a set…in fact, the largest set of all. But every set, even the largest one, has a powerset which contains it, and that which contains it must be larger (a contradiction). The obvious solution: define an extension of set theory incorporating two senses of “containment” which work together in such a way that the largest set can be defined as "containing" its powerset in one sense while being contained by its powerset in the other. Thus, it topologically includes itself in the act of descriptively including itself in the act of topologically including itself..., and so on, in the course of which it obviously becomes more than just a set.

In the Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe or CTMU, the set of all sets, and the real universe to which it corresponds, take the name (SCSPL) of the required extension of set theory. SCSPL, which stands for Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language, is just a totally intrinsic, i.e. completely self-contained, language that is comprehensively and coherently (self-distributively) self-descriptive, and can thus be model-theoretically identified as its own universe or referent domain. Theory and object go by the same name because unlike conventional ZF or NBG set theory, SCSPL hologically infuses sets and their elements with the distributed (syntactic, metalogical) component of the theoretical framework containing and governing them, namely SCSPL syntax itself, replacing ordinary set-theoretic objects with SCSPL syntactic operators. The CTMU is so-named because the SCSPL universe, like the set of all sets, distributively embodies the logical syntax of its own descriptive mathematical language. It is thus not only self-descriptive in nature; where logic denotes the rules of cognition (reasoning, inference), it is SELF-COGNITIVE as well. SELF-COGNITIVE;) pwned

without god, you wouldnt even have the ability to tell me that any action was good or evil."

Frankly, this doesn't make any sense what-so-ever. Until you demonstrate that there is an entity which can be classified as a "god" and then demonstrate that this being is as you describe it, it's utterly asinine to make a claim that anything is dependent on said being.

Your arguments thus far have all the hallmarks of perception manipulation. You use words which (I'm basing this wholly on the level at which you've argued previously) you likely would not be able to use effectively on your own.

Multi-syllable words are only an indication of intelligence if used correctly, and even then only if the content is cogent. The very purpose of complex verbage is to express a thought or idea in such a way as to be more easily understood.

I will, however, add a caveat, as I strive to have an honest understanding. If you can, in your own words, restate what you are trying to say in such a way as to be readily understood then we (I'm making the presumption to speak for this forum's community) can start having an honest discussion about its strengths and weaknesses, and subsequently come to an understanding.

Until then I, for one, have to disregard your attempts to "explain" as a failed play at impressing people with syllables.

by the way,neuroscientists vilanyu ramachandran found out that you can still detect motion without being conscious of it. it is called "blindsight."since being conscious could have no evolutionary purpose, how did it develop?without god, we would be robots, like monkeys.

Okay guys he is now resorting back to copying and pasting from pseudo-scientific websites....Then writing "owned" after doing it...Gee this guy is so smart, he is unlike any theist I have ever encountered! LOL This kid must be at most 14 years old..

seriously. do you not see that he is blatantly just trolling this blog? there is probably good reason the spam filter is eating his posts, his IP has most likely been flagged by multiple blogs/comment pages for exactly this sort of behavior.

"by DEFINITION, being aware of your actions has no effect on them. and therefore no evolutionary purpose.thus god. and why do you think every mind NEEDS TO HAVE A BRAIN. there could be a brainless mind, god's mind."

LOL... Well until you can provide evidence of a mind without a brain I'm not inclined to think it's possible Mikey, but the floor is yours if you can provide some...

by DEFINITION, being aware of your actions has no effect on them.and therefore no evolutionary purpose.thus god.

Of course being aware of my actions can have an effect on them. I can improve on my actions, or discontinue them. If I realize I'm being an asshole, I can curb that.

And no, not thus god. That's an argument from ignorance, because even if we didn't know the reason for it, you couldn't just leap to that conclusion without positive evidence that it's the case. You can't just assert it.

and why do you think every mind NEEDS TO HAVE A BRAIN.

Why does every computer program need to run on a computer? The brain is what "runs" the mind.

"Mike said.. "why do you think people blow themselves up if god isnt real? you think they are just insane?"

By that logic we're forced to believe everything that everyone tells us.

Should we believe that aliens are abducting people because there are so many that have corroborating stories?

Should we believe that some little girls in Nepal are really living goddesses?

Should we believe the sociopath who kills people because they're in his mind stealing his thoughts?

Should we believe that cultists who drink poison are really taken up to heaven in a spaceship?

You can not draw a line that necessarily demonstrates the existence of a thing based on what individuals or groups do because of their belief in said thing.

"Mike said.. ;) pwned"

That's more than a little pretentious considering that your entire argument is a cut & paste. To address the original author a natural progression of reactive elements is not an indication of intrinsic logic, nor is it in any way indicative of self-cognition.

As an addendum, your entire argument is fairly ironic when overlayed with your underlying purpose (ostensibly, to prove that your particular brand of deity exists).

The god you argue for would necessarily be unconcerned with the progression of human life, as we would be just another aspect of its existence. The abrahamic god was not only overly concerned to the point of being jealous of the attentions of finite beings, he was far from logical.

I've read the thread thus far, and I think where you're failing is that you aren't really providing YOUR reasons that you believe there is a basis for believing in god(s), you're copy/pasting reasons from multiple unrelated sources.

Here are my reasons for being an agnostic atheist:

1) I have not been presented with sufficient evidence to support the idea that any given god exists. Because of this I do not believe in any gods. Therefore I am an atheist.

2) The concept of a god allows it to exist outside natural existence as we know it. That makes it untestable. Because it is untestable I can not with 100% certainty say that it is not real. Therefore I am agnostic with respect to knowledge of gods' existences.

Could you provide a succinct list like this, *in your own words*, why you believe god is real? Including external arguments such as kalam in your list of points is fine, but it's not necessary to copy/paste the entirety of the arguments' bodies. (The rate of your copy/paste posting could be contributing to your hitting the spam filter, btw.)

DustFurn: I am generally in agreement with you at this point. But I think this thread has been instructive (as well as entertaining), as it demonstrates the complete mental chaos that is the mind of the devout believer.

I agree Mike is basically just trolling now. I don't think he is Andrew, because Andrew was never caught in the spam filter, and if Mike is continually being caught this way, I suspect he has a long history, under one or more ID's, of trolling atheist blogs in this fashion.

Anyway, I think we've given Mike enough chances (we're at well over 100 comments in only a few hours anyway) to present a cogent argument of his own. Instead, he's made something of a spectacle of himself. He shows up here, acts all blustery and tough, promises to prove God exists in 10 minutes, throws Kalam at us, we smash it, throws the general first cause argument at us, we smash that, then he takes a wild left turn into wackytown by extensively pasting a load of obfuscatory nonsense from some pantheist website, without demonstrating he even understands the very material he's posting or that he can defend its points in his own words.

Now he's flailing badly, no longer the cocky and confident alpha-theist he paraded as when he first turned up. In desperation he's hurling out appeal to authority/popularity fallacies, long dead moral arguments, and stuff that even his hero William Lane Craig would consider weak.

So here you go, Mike. Heads up: NEW RULES.

From now on your comments will not be automatically released from spam. We've been exceedingly fair to you, even at your most douchebaggy. The record is above, in case you think of whining about censorship again. Frankly, that won't play.

If you copy-paste from another website, the comment will remain in spam.

If you snivel about how censorious we are, well, boo-hoo, but that comment will remain in spam too.

The only comments of your that will be allowed henceforth will be ones in which you, in your own words, present the reasons you believe in God, followed up by whatever evidence you can come up with to convince us. You said you could do this in ten minutes before. But of course, it's a different ball game when you have to do it on your own, and can't fling the arguments of others our way instead, isn't it.

name ONE thing we need consciousness for.in fact, some humans are not conscious in certain ways.some feel no pain, but they still have reflexes whena needle pokes them.and some may be fully unconscious. how would you even know?how do you know when you are kicking a person if they are even feeling the pain?they scream and you think "o no i hurt them" but i already explained that some people dont feel pain. Congenital insensitivity to pain

But here, Mike: how do you explain all those with God, in a way that doesn't ultimately lead to logical fallacies or just pushing the same questions back a level? In other words, when "god" is your explanation for the universe, then the question becomes "where did god come from?" It doesn't solve the problem, it just moves the problem up a step.

Finally, Mike, is the CTMU argument for god's existence the one that convinced you? If so, then you must be able to put it in your own words rather than engaging in this silly copy-pasting. If not, then why would it convince us?

The idea that a omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent being popped out of nowhere and then popped everything else out of nowhere is so patently absurd as far as I'm concerned that it doesn't even warrant consideration until it can be demonstrated that any such could possibly exist.

Everything else is merely an addendum further driving a nail in that proverbial coffin.

This is fucking hilarious. Langan's claim to being the smartest man in America is based on an IQ test he took IN OMNI MAGAZINE, which was called "the world's hardest IQ test." The questions on the test have absolutely nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with TRIVIA.

Here's a sample question: "Pain is to Rue, as Bread is to ?"

The answer is "street." "Pain" and "Rue" and French words for "bread" and street". It's a test full of shit like this that "measured" Langan as having an IQ of 195-210. Utter bullshit. This man is a crank, end of discussion.

Sorry, Mike, you don't get to play that one either. The burden of proof always rests upon the person making the positive claim. You are claiming God exists. We are saying we don't believe you. Shifting the burden of proof is just another logical fallacy, usually resorted to when everything else the believer has tried has failed spectacularly.

Mike has confused consciousness with sentience. A dog may have limited or no sentience, but it definitely has consciousness. Consider that a dog can be sedated--made unconscious. If it were not conscious in the first place, then where would the difference come from?

Further, he fails to understand what blindsight is. In people with certain kinds of blindness, the part of the brain responsible for actually producing vision is damaged, but other parts of the brains still respond to visual stimuli, even if the person is not consciously able to interpret their visual input. This is a function of the fact that different parts of the brain govern different things, not some magical property of consciousness, nor is it some evidence that consciousness is unnecessary. There is a difference between being conscious, being aware, being able to process various stimuli on an intentional level, and being sentient, and Mike is apparently unclear on this.

Further, Mike is engaging in a common mistake with regard to evolution. Let's pretend that consciousness is not evolutionarily advantageous, ignoring all the advantages that are provided by the ability to think abstractly, plan for and anticipate the future, and relate in complex ways to our environment and other organisms. Even if there were no advantage to consciousness, that is no argument against it being a product of natural evolutionary processes. There are many traits that propagate because they are linked to advantageous traits by virtue of being on the same chromosome, or because they are not deleterious, or because a population bottleneck made them common. There are almost certainly traits that propagate because they are tied to advantageous traits in ways that we do not yet know (e.g., a single protein produces both traits, or something). The idea that every trait must provide an evolutionary advantage in order to be passed on is the result of a very naïve assessment of evolutionary biology.

Mike, to be an atheist is to lack belief in gods. It is not reasonable to ask someone to prove a negative.

Example, a person who believes in the Loch Ness Monster, and a person that doesn't:

A-nessist: I don't believe in Nessie.

Nessist: Well prove that Nessie doesn't exist!

Would it be reasonable to expect the a-nessist to drain Loch Ness and dig through every square foot of mud searching for dinosaur-like bones just to disprove the proposition that there's a monster in Loch Ness?

I would say no, it's not. When one makes a positive claim such as, "The Loch Ness Monster exists" or, "God exists" the responsibility to provide evidence rests exclusively with the person making the claim.

Do you accept that requesting that we prove a negative is unreasonable, or do you still have reasons remaining where you believe the responsibility rests with the atheist?

in daniel 2 neb. predics 4 empires that didnt exist yet.in dnaiel 12 it says there will be growth in technology and travel. explain these profecies. jesus born of a virgin LIKE IT SAIDin bethlehem LIKE IT SAIDpreceded by a messenger JOHN THE BAPTIST LIKE IT SAIDrejected by his ppl LIKE IT SAIdpierced in the side LIKE IT SAIDcrucified LIKE IT SAID

I sometimes have a hard time differentiating between trolls and fervent theists. I can't tell which you are right now, Mike, but you don't seem to be answering any of our reasonable questions, so I'm leaning toward the former.

I'm sure we're all willing to continue the conversation here, but there's a lot of open ends dangling that require your input to close. If you don't it shows that you aren't actually interested in accepting input and hashing your arguments out, but merely throwing ideas at our wall and hoping something manages to stick.

You made him [man] ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet...the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas,how did psalms 8:1 know about water currents?

ok fine, the reason i actually believe in god is that there are things we dont understand, so i use god to explain them. and plus my parents taught me that and i went to church a lot so that made god my go-to idea for explaining things.but i have lots of things from the bible that prove god, if you would just stop blocking me!

So I thought I'd have a little look at this Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe. Apperently it was actually published in a Journal: "Progress in Complexity"

A little more searching finds this is an online only Journal. And looking at that list of Fellows we find:Surprise surprise Christopher Michael Langan. So he had his work published in his own journal. I tried to read the paper but did not find a single intelligible sentence.

Other notable thinkers on the SOciety fellows Page include: Michael Behe & William Lane Craig. Hmm I may be seeing a pattern here.

Because so much of this has been beaten to death, I'll just focus on one thing that Mike said in the previous thread:

"matt said we have to rely on copies of copies of translations of copies.ok, do you apply the same standard of evidence to ancient greek writers like Herodotus, Lucretius, Scorates, and Homer?if you did you would have to DISCARD those texts. and the New Testament is 99.5 percent accurate with 5600 copies. so matt should apologize for this lie."

Yes, we should apply the same standard of evidence. I would recommend, for example, that you take Homer's tales of sirens and one-eyed giants and men being turned into swine with a grain of salt.

As far as Socrates goes, many scholars are uncertain that he did exist; but the ideas expressed by Socrates in Plato's writings stand or fall on their own merits, not because they originated with Socrates.

We're not saying that you should "discard" the Bible; we're saying that you have no reason to conclude that it is an accurate account of history.

"Stripped down to its basics, the CTMU is just yet another postmodern “perception defines the universe” idea. Nothing unusual about it on that level. What makes it interesting is that it tries to take a set-theoretic approach to doing it."

And the gist of the first post seems to be that it's a lot of word salad. I know you're shocked to hear that.

my biblical evidence got deleted and martin put it back but now everyone has to go back and read it adn respond to it,. if you dont you will not be good atheists you will be lazy atheists.and by the way i think you are agnostics actually. see my william lane craig video i posted above.

Mike, FYI, nobody has been "blocking" your comments. As I tried to explain at least three times earlier this evening, our automatic spam blocker is arbitrarily killing a bunch of posts that we didn't ask it to. We have been unblocking them, but both Martin and I were away for several hours.

I have only now gotten home and let all your posts out of the box, and we're hoping that eventually the spam filter will settle down and stop bothering you. But TRUST ME, absolutely nobody here wants anything other than to let you go on with this stuff as long as possible.

I haven't caught up with the thread yet, but I'll get right on that when I can.

Mike i don't think you're reallllly a christian I think you're an agnostic. I mean you can't know everything right? Think of everything you know and compare that to the total knowledge of the universe. Obviously you're really an agnostic. ;)

Actually most of the people here would gladly call them selves agnostic atheists, and if you weren't such a lazy christian and actually informed yourself first you'd know that.

and by the way i think you are agnostics actually. see my william lane craig video i posted above.

I posted above that I'm an agnostic atheist and why. You're misunderstanding the terms.

(A)theism has to do with the belief in gods. Think of it answering, "Do you believe in any gods?" Answering yes yields a theist, answering no yields an atheist.

(A)gnostic in this context has to do with the conviction one has about their knowledge of the god proposition. Think of it answering, "Are you absolutely certain that your position on the existence of gods is 100% correct?" Being 100% sure of your answer yields a gnostic, not being 100% yields an agnostic.

The two terms are used in combination:

Gnostic theistAgnostic theistGnostic atheistAgnostic atheist

Mike, are you done posting your reasons for why you believe God exists? Posting challenges to come up with reasons for why such and such passage in the bible exists can be entertaining, but it doesn't get us any closer to understanding why we should believe your god exists. Please use the format I suggested above where you list all your best reasons so we can review and respond to them all accordingly.

Actually it doesn't Mike, it's "Circle of the earth"..not sphere, there's a difference. What this particular verse is saying is that when you look out at the earth from upon high, you look all around you and the land appears to be "circular." Implying a flat earth that's circular in shape. Of course it's up to interpretation as to what it specifically means, but it almost certainly does not explain the earth as a sphere....explanation complete son.

This particular verse is up to interpretation and most likely is referring to the "heavens" or what I would call it, "the Sky". Yes it appears that the sky is floating! But actually Mike the earth doesn't float, nor does it hang by nothing. The earth is constantly moving around the sun by a force we call gravity. And this verse isn't talking about that. You should know that the book of Job...is a book of poetry......there son I 'Splained it..

Mike said.."genesis 7:11 says there are valleys in the sea. did they have scuba equipment?no.did they hold their breaths for hours?no. how did it know.CHECK MATE."

No it doesn't say there are valleys in the sea, it says.. "all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the windows of the heavens were opened."

This in no way implies that there are valleys in the sea. Nice try bud, but you don't get to claim "checkmate" by making up your own personal interpretation of a verse in order to try and show that the bible is true or divinely inspired. But I'm sure you didn't actually think of this on your own and actually got it from some creationist website. I believe all of your pawns,knights, bishops, rooks, and King and Queen have been killed long ago.

Define "accurate." If you're talking about accuracy between copies, then you've been misinformed. Per Biblical historian Bart Ehrman: "There are more variations among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament." If you're talking about accuracy with respect to reality, then you've been misinformed: the mustard seed is not even close to the smallest of all seeds, the sun does not move around the Earth, and bats are not birds (to name just a few). Assertions are not evidence, Mike.

thats more accurate that most greek ancient books like homer, lucretius, herodotus.you name it.

would you just throw those books away?

Homer wrote mytholigized history. Herodotus was called "the father of lies." You're right, we don't throw those books away. We also don't believe everything they say. We believe the things that are reasonably corroborated and disbelieve the things that are not. For instance, "Homer" probably never existed as a single person, and the Iliad was almost certainly the compilation of a story told orally for many generations. We can discuss these matters because of the evidence that we have.

Also, note that the Greek texts you cite are all a century or more older than the earliest Christian texts. And yet, while we can say some things with a high degree of certainty about the truth of Herodotus's writings or the existence of Homer, we cannot corroborate the existence of Biblical figures like Jesus or Moses any more than we can corroborate the existence of Achilles or Odysseus. So why should we believe your myths any more than we believe the Greek ones?

and if i cant use the bible then you cant use th eorigin of species.

We'll leave aside the point that the Origin of Species was based on well-documented evidence collected and compiled by a single known person only one hundred and fifty years ago, and corroborated by the independent observations of his contemporaries, in contrast to the Bible, which is the compilation of dozens of books written over a span of millennia by many authors, most of them anonymous, describing countless events which are either uncorroborated or flatly contradicted by independent evidence. We can even accept your premise: let's leave the Origin of Species alone. Instead, we'll rely on the mountains upon mountains of evidence for biological evolution that science has acquired in the intervening hundred and fifty years. Darwin is not our prophet, and Origin is not our holy book. There were many things that Darwin didn't know, and we have greatly improved upon his understanding. Unlike religion, science marches on.

We'll ignore the fact that the Earth is not a sphere, but a slightly pear-shaped oblate spheroid. We'll leave aside the fact that Isaiah 40:22 actually says the Earth is a "circle" with the sky stretched above it like a tent, which is more in-line with a cosmology which says that the Earth is a flat disc than one which suggests the Earth is spherical. That part of Isaiah was written around the 6th Century BCE; at the exact same time, Greek philosophy held that the Earth was spherical. Three hundred years later, Greek astronomers would confirm it several times over. Is that evidence that Zeus and Apollo are real?

job 26:7 explains earth is floating in space.'splain it, son.

Actually, it says that the Earth is hanging on nothing. Doesn't actually say anything about space. But then, 1 Samuel 2:8 and Job 9:6 say that the Earth is set on pillars. So which is it? Is the Earth floating in space, or held up by pillars?

So much for that vaunted Biblical accuracy.

genesis 7:11 says there are valleys in the sea. did they have scuba equipment?no.did they hold their breaths for hours?no.

Did they guess? Probably. The same verse says that rain comes out of the "windows" of Heaven. Strange how we've never seen those, having gone into space and all.

The Bible is the big book of multiple choice. Look close enough, and you can find support for any position, even a position as inconsistent as yours, Mike. You're happy to trumpet places where science eventually confirms things that you think the Bible says, and to claim those as proof that the Bible is true. But then, when science flatly contradicts your Bible, as in the discovery of evolution, you still claim the Bible is accurate and want us to ignore the science. You can't have it both ways, Mike.

"i really like this neil tyson vid.but he SAYS that 15% of THE MOST BRILLIANT MINDS IN OUR COUNTRY believe god.so obviously the burden is on atheists to prove why they DONT believe"

Another argument from authority...Logical fallacy repeat. Shifting the burden of proof fallacy again... Failure to recognize that the claim.."15% of the most brilliant minds in our country believe in god".. is not a fact that supports his beliefs, meaning that 85% of the most brilliant minds in our country don't believe in a god...Although I'm skeptical of the survey statistics regardless.

@Issac F - I would even go a little further on your explanation to Mike that he seemed to miss the first time. When someone is asked if they believe in any god, a yes would be a theist. Anything else, not just no, would yield an atheist. Answers such as "I am not sure" or "I have no belief either way" would not fall under belief of a god.

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PLEASE NOTE: The Atheist Experience has moved to a new location, and this blog is now closed to comments. To participate in future discussions, please visit http://www.freethoughtblogs.com/axp.The Atheist Experience is a weekly live call-in television show sponsored by the Atheist Community of Austin. This independently-run blog (not sponsored by the ACA) features contributions from current and former hosts and co-hosts of the show.